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Blazestorm
Supreme [H]ardness
- Joined
- Jan 17, 2007
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- 6,940
So I have 5 - 750 gig drives
And data stored across 3 x 500, 2 x 250, and 1 x 120 (although they're not all full that's only 2.2tb) and with 5 x 750 drives I have a 3TB array (well 2.8)
8 Hot-swap bays plugged into an 8port Supermicro PCIX Card...
I already built 1 array in windows server 2003, it went fine, took ~16 hours to build (I slept through the last 12 hours) but I've decided I actually want to downgrade my "server" and move most of the parts into a gaming LAN computer.
I was looking at this motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131551
My friend is giving me a 3.7ghz Pentium 4 (which should work w/ this board) and an 1950XTX card... I can put that card into the gaming machine and all I need is a PSU... all I need for the server is a motherboard, ram and that CPU.
The sole purpose of this machine is a file server, it could potentially host small 8-12 person servers at LAN's but that's very rare, and we don't have an issues running client-style servers right now.
I just formatted a 20GB drive and installed Server 2003 (with the same components)... and am moving the 80gig IDE to the "gaming" computer... the Raid-5 showed up on the new installation after installing the drivers for the card. It's resynching now, so I know I can transfer the Raid array to a new OS drive... (It showed up as "foreign" and then I "imported it" and it detected a 5-drive Raid 5 array and was flawless as far as I can tell...
I'm curious if it would work cross-platform, as in I could build the array now, move all my files, sell off the old drives (so I can afford to order the new motherboard) then I can re-install server03 again onto the 20gb and with the new components rebuild the Raid5 and not lose any Data.
I guess I'm just paranoid that if I sell off my old drives, I will have no place to put the files if they don't work on the new components, Right now the Array is empty, so I have nothing to lose. The only thing changing is the motherboard, processor, and ram.. the controller card stays the same... which is why I almost think it would work.
And then there's software raid with Linux which has gotten a lot of praise, you can add drives, it's much faster, and a lot more cross-platform... I've just never dealt with Linux before... and would rather just stick w/ Windows for convience... if I ever want to expand the array I would have to backup all the data, then kill and rebuild the array..
I'm sort of rambling on a bit... I could potentially do a drop-in test with this system... if I plugged in the Supermicro controller, I could try to build the array on the Vista machine... then I would know it's cross-platform and component... and would be less worried about losing everything, although the write performance is terrible in server03 raid-5... supposedly it's a lot better in Linux, almost on par w/ Hardware... but I don't know for sure.
Any thoughts... stick with server03 for now? I should be able to migrate to new(older) components? Go to linux? Software Raid sucks?
And data stored across 3 x 500, 2 x 250, and 1 x 120 (although they're not all full that's only 2.2tb) and with 5 x 750 drives I have a 3TB array (well 2.8)
8 Hot-swap bays plugged into an 8port Supermicro PCIX Card...
I already built 1 array in windows server 2003, it went fine, took ~16 hours to build (I slept through the last 12 hours) but I've decided I actually want to downgrade my "server" and move most of the parts into a gaming LAN computer.
I was looking at this motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131551
My friend is giving me a 3.7ghz Pentium 4 (which should work w/ this board) and an 1950XTX card... I can put that card into the gaming machine and all I need is a PSU... all I need for the server is a motherboard, ram and that CPU.
The sole purpose of this machine is a file server, it could potentially host small 8-12 person servers at LAN's but that's very rare, and we don't have an issues running client-style servers right now.
I just formatted a 20GB drive and installed Server 2003 (with the same components)... and am moving the 80gig IDE to the "gaming" computer... the Raid-5 showed up on the new installation after installing the drivers for the card. It's resynching now, so I know I can transfer the Raid array to a new OS drive... (It showed up as "foreign" and then I "imported it" and it detected a 5-drive Raid 5 array and was flawless as far as I can tell...
I'm curious if it would work cross-platform, as in I could build the array now, move all my files, sell off the old drives (so I can afford to order the new motherboard) then I can re-install server03 again onto the 20gb and with the new components rebuild the Raid5 and not lose any Data.
I guess I'm just paranoid that if I sell off my old drives, I will have no place to put the files if they don't work on the new components, Right now the Array is empty, so I have nothing to lose. The only thing changing is the motherboard, processor, and ram.. the controller card stays the same... which is why I almost think it would work.
And then there's software raid with Linux which has gotten a lot of praise, you can add drives, it's much faster, and a lot more cross-platform... I've just never dealt with Linux before... and would rather just stick w/ Windows for convience... if I ever want to expand the array I would have to backup all the data, then kill and rebuild the array..
I'm sort of rambling on a bit... I could potentially do a drop-in test with this system... if I plugged in the Supermicro controller, I could try to build the array on the Vista machine... then I would know it's cross-platform and component... and would be less worried about losing everything, although the write performance is terrible in server03 raid-5... supposedly it's a lot better in Linux, almost on par w/ Hardware... but I don't know for sure.
Any thoughts... stick with server03 for now? I should be able to migrate to new(older) components? Go to linux? Software Raid sucks?